


the word is on the street

by frausorge



Category: Renault CLIO Ad: 30 Years in the Making
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:01:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27432436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frausorge/pseuds/frausorge
Summary: It was the hardest letter Gemma had ever had to write.
Relationships: Gemma/Seza (Renault CLIO Ad: 30 Years in the Making)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2020





	the word is on the street

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tablelamp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tablelamp/gifts).



> I was so excited to see your prompt for these characters, tablelamp! Thanks for the opportunity to write about them. 
> 
> Many thanks also to Pensnest for helpful beta and brit-picking. Title from Wonderwall.

It was the hardest letter Gemma had ever had to write. _I love you,_ she wrote first, because that was easy to say and it was the most important thing. _I love you so much but I cannot—_

She stuck there for a while, unsure how to say what had to come next.

_I cannot be more than your friend. It causes too much tension and conflict. My father found your last letter and it upset him very much. I suppose your parents, your family and friends must feel the same way. It isn't right to cause so much pain to everyone else we love. It's best to be friends as we were before this summer._

She signed the letter, addressed the envelope, sealed it, and laid it on her desk. Then she lay down flat on her bed. She closed her eyes, but she could not sleep. In the morning, in the grey twilight before dawn, she got up and went down to the post box at the corner and dropped the letter in.

Seza was so kind about it. Gemma couldn't fathom how kind. _I understand,_ Seza wrote back. _I never want to do anything that hurts you. I hope you and your father will get on better now._

_You're still my best friend,_ she wrote. _You always will be._

Gemma cried and cried over that letter. So many tears, and still she wasn't brave enough to write back and say she'd changed her mind. 

Seza's next letter was only about the books she was reading and the new recipes she'd tried. The lower left corner, where there was room for a lipstick print, was left white and blank.

A few letters later—which meant a few months later now, the letters having slowed somewhat—there was a short paragraph near the end. _My cousin wants to set me up on a date. I suppose we'll see how it goes._

A few years later there was a large cream-coloured envelope addressed in an unfamiliar though elegant script. Inside, along with the printed invitation, there was a note in Seza's own handwriting. _I hope you can come to the ceremony,_ she said. _It would mean a lot to me to have you there._

Gemma didn't let herself cry over that letter. _Of course I'll be there,_ she wrote back. _I wish you every happiness._

"Will you come down for the choir concert in July?" Gemma's mother asked.

"No, sorry, I can't," Gemma said. "I'll be in France that weekend. For Seza's wedding."

"Oh, lovely," her mum said, glancing over at Gemma's father. He looked up from his plate and studied Gemma with a serious expression, but said nothing.

Seza's mother wrapped her arms around Gemma and exclaimed over her height. Seza's father squeezed both her hands and kissed both her cheeks.

Alexandre shook Gemma's hand with his other hand at the small of Seza's back. He was a director at a well-respected news magazine, and he coached a girls' football team in his spare time. His Parisian friends asked Gemma all about her freelance illustration projects at the dinner for out-of-town guests. 

"You have known Seza for quite a long time?" one said. 

"Yes," Gemma said, "ever since we were young."

Seza looked directly at Gemma while she was walking up the aisle toward the altar, her face brightening when their eyes met. After the ceremony, when she and Alexandre made their way down the church steps, Seza's eyes were fixed on the car waiting for them in the street. She turned her head back once, but not far enough to meet Gemma's gaze.

Gemma returned to her hotel and put all the things she had unpacked back into her suitcase, one after the other.

"The room was not to your satisfaction, mademoiselle?" said the receptionist, looking disconcerted, when she stopped at the desk to check out.

"No, no," Gemma said, trying to force a smile. "The room was excellent. It is only that I am called back to England. I must return immediately, tonight."

He did not look as if he found this entirely convincing, but all he said was, "Then I wish you a smooth journey, mademoiselle."

"Are you quite well, love?" Gemma's mother said. "You've been looking a bit pale."

"Yes, mum. Just got a lot of work just now."

On the notice board at her dentist's office she saw a flyer for a monthly women's night at a local gay bar. It was nothing to do with her, but she recalled it several days later when she was waiting for the kettle to boil and staring absentmindedly at her big wall calendar. This was the third Thursday, so the women must be gathering. That was nice, she thought. It was good that they had a place and a time to be together.

The next month she remembered the third Thursday at the beginning of the week, and something made her avoid making any plans for that evening. When it came, though, she was right in the middle of a complex and interesting project and didn't close out of it till nearly midnight.

It was the same the next month.

A month after that, Gemma walked down to the pub on the Thursday night and ordered herself a cider. There was no harm in just seeing what it was like. The tables were fairly full of women, some leaning into each other or holding hands, and a cheerful buzz of conversation nearly drowned out the music. Gemma tried not to stare, but she glanced a few times at the intertwined fingers of the couple at the next table. They looked so easy and comfortable.

She went back the next month, and the next. That time someone smiled at her and asked to buy her a drink. Gemma stammered out a refusal, shaking her head frantically. The woman lifted an ironic eyebrow, then nodded at her and turned away. 

Afterwards, Gemma was angry at herself for her lack of courage. She made up her mind that the next time she got such an offer, she would say yes.

Over the next several months, she accepted a drink and an evening of chatting a handful of times. Twice she even went to dinner with women who'd asked her to meet again. But their smiles were more friendly than heated by the end of the evening, and she couldn't feel any regret for that. 

Gemma contracted for more projects and did work she was proud of. She went swimming three days a week, learned a few new bread recipes, attended a birthday party for the one-year-old son of her new friends Kate and Helen, and visited her parents at the weekend. 

She wrote of all those things in her next letter to Seza. Seza's letters over the last year or two had taken on a sparse, strained tone, telling very little about herself and asking instead for more news of Gemma's doings. Gemma hoped she had filled this letter with enough quiet cheerfulness to make Seza smile. 

She wondered what Seza would think of her mention of Kate and Helen, whether that would cast Seza's mind back to the past the way it had done her own. All Seza said in reply, though, was a simple _Your friends sound nice._

"Gemma?" said a woman with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, pausing by Gemma's table. "I don't know if you remember me—we met a few years ago. I used to work with your father." 

Gemma smiled to cover how her pulse was racing. "Hello," she said. "It's Gowri, isn't it? I remember, we met at the staff picnic."

Gowri introduced the woman with her as her partner, Ruth, and they all chatted for a few minutes more. Then Gowri said exactly what Gemma had feared she would: "Tell your father hello from me, when you speak to him next."

Gemma managed a nod and a weak smile in response.

All the while she was driving down, she told herself it wasn't necessary to bring it up this weekend. The next visit, or the next after that, would do. But when she was sitting with her father after tea, just as he reached for the television remote, she opened her mouth and said, "I have a message for you. Your old colleague Gowri asked me to tell you hello from her."

"Oh? Well, thank you," he said. His eyebrows furrowed. "Where on earth did you run into her?"

Gemma took a breath, and then another. Then she lifted her head and looked her father in the eye. "It was at a women's night, at the Lion," she said.

His mouth twisted sharply, but he said nothing for another minute, which was already an improvement over the last time the topic had come between them.

"She's a rare woman, Gowri," he said finally. "Brooks no nonsense. She wasn't afraid to tell me when I'd got things wrong."

Gemma watched him silently; she couldn't open her throat to speak.

"She told me that she and her—that she and Ruth are right for each other. And I saw it, you know, when I met Ruth. They make each other very happy."

Gemma could hardly breathe.

"What I mean to say is," her father said, "I'd like to see you happy, too. I want that more, now, than—than what I used to put first."

At that, air finally rushed into Gemma's lungs. "Thank you, Dad," she said. 

He nodded. "So," he went on laboriously, "if there's someone you'd like to bring round—"

Gemma couldn't tell if her heart was sinking or rising. "Thank you," she said again. "But there isn't, now."

"All right," he said. "But if there is, later on..."

"I don't know if there ever will be anyone for me," Gemma blurted out. "I'm afraid I missed my chance."

"Oh, pet," her father said.

He put his arm round her shoulder, and she leaned her head against his. They sat together quietly until Gemma's mother came back in from the garden.

Gemma worked, and swam, and baked. She designed a logo for Kate's council campaign and took a course on digital photography. In the summer she went on holiday to Mallorca, lying still in the sand till her head was filled with nothing but the sound of the waves.

One night in September, after saving her project and closing her laptop, Gemma picked up her phone to find a series of messages that set her heart racing. 

_Are you at home?_  
_I must see you_  
_I am starting for Calais_  
_I've left Alexandre_

_I'm at home,_ Gemma sent back. She barely trusted herself to say anything else. Finally she added just, _Speak soon._

It was nearly dawn by the time Seza's car drew up in front of Gemma's flat. When Gemma heard the engine cut off, she set down the mug she'd been clutching and went outside. 

Seza looked worn and exhausted from more than the night's drive, but she laid her palm against Gemma's face with a gentle touch. Then they were wrapped up in each other's arms, and Gemma did not know how to let go. 

"I know what you said before," Seza said in her ear, "but I love you—only you. Please, will you try again? Will you be with me?"

"Yes," Gemma said. 

Then Seza's lips found hers.

Gemma had thought she would need to be brave to do this, but with Seza warm and breathing raggedly in her arms, she did not feel brave. What she felt first and foremost was relief. Then somewhere far out beyond that was a dim sense of impending joy.

"You must be exhausted," Gemma said when they finally made their way inside. "You should lie down and rest."

Seza squeezed her hand. "I will, if you will lie down with me."

Gemma wanted to smile and cry all at the same time. She couldn't speak, only nodded.

In her bedroom, she drew the curtains against the morning sun and then turned back to the bed. Seza was already lying on the pillows there, watching her. Gemma got into bed too and lay down on her side facing Seza.

Seza reached for Gemma's hand and brought it to her lips. She kissed Gemma's knuckles and then uncurled Gemma's fingers and kissed each of her fingertips. Then, still holding Gemma's hand in one of hers, she reached up with the other and smoothed some stray locks of hair away from Gemma's forehead.

"What are you thinking, to look so serious?"

"Just—" Gemma said. She paused, trying to fit the feeling into words. Finally she said, "This is right. This is where we belong. Together."

Seza's face broke into a brilliant smile. "Yes," she said.


End file.
